Politics? - I don't think so.
Rather, justice crying out to be seen to be done.
Hopefully acceptably within the OT gambit.
_________________________________

Boycott Bali?
Why wouldn't you?
Nobody with any sense whatsoever would ever again got to Bali on
holiday. But, alas, it's not that simple.

I feel extremely sorry, and have done so for a long time, for the
Indonesian people trapped in a corrupt and dictatorial state, lorded
over by the military, where corruption is utterly endemic, power is
total influence and justice is, by almost any standard, a joke. But it
takes an extreme example of them reaching into "our" world to really
get my, and our, attention.

For the "Bali 9", dropped into the worst possible imaginable situation
by their own government, I can feel sympathy, but they are manifestly
the victims of their own evil-doing and stupidity. Attempting to
traverse Indonesian Customs with significant amounts of heroin taped
to your body leaves one rightly open to anything the Indonesian
'authorities' may choose to do to you. Sadly for them, death is not
the worst possible
outcome for these people.

But Schapelle Corby's case is different. Unquestionably, it makes a
difference
to many that she is young, and pretty and female, not to mention
seemingly innocent. But it's not the main point. The case against her
has so many manifest holes in it, the Indonesian Judiciary's
performance at her trial, which would be laughable in other
circumstances, and the lack of anything approaching reasonable process
is completely unacceptable to people accustomed to justice being
approximately just. The Australian Government's statesmanlike
"don't make waves" response is understandable but verges on the
Chamberlainesque. Their "gift" of nine other (alleged) drug
traffickers to the Indonesian authorities seems to have gone
unnoticed.

That a leading Malaysian newspaper should decide to shill for it's
corrupt and irrational neighbour and accuse all Australians of racism
in their response is as unnacceptable as it is unexpected. Their
professed astonishment at the depth of Australian response to the
conviction suggests that they will be utterly astounded at where
things will go from here. And while some of the responses are indeed
racist, and unacceptably so, the majority are not. Attempting to
dismiss the widespread and heartfelt public response in such manner is
in turn in large part racially motivated. If the Malaysian press had
been equally vocal on the several occasions in recent years when
foreigners were murdered in Indonesia and the
planners and perpetrators subsequently received trivial sentences
which were
an affront to justice, one might less feel that they 'doth protest too
much'.

Is Schapelle guilty? Just possibly. But almost certainly not. And if
she is guilty she is almost certainly mentally deficient as well. To
take around $50,000 of Marijuana and import it into a country where it
is freely available and would be worth around $4,000. To place 4 kg of
it in an unidentifiable bag and then freely identify it as being yours
when asked, and to import it into, of all places, Indonesia, where
every Australian expects security should be much tighter after the
carnage that certain Indonesians wrought on several hundred
Australians a few years ago, would require a degree of incompetence
and irrationality only expected in the upper echelons of "a certain
country's" hierarchy.

It would seem that her greatest mistake was being accused of doing the
wrong crime. In a country where you can plan the subsequently
successful murder of over 200 people, mostly foreigners, including 88
Australians,
and subsequently receive a 3 year jail term for your efforts, and
expect to be out in far less than that, she was clearly accused of the
wrong crime. In a country where you can murder a NZ soldier and cut
off his ears as trophies and receive a similar sentence to the mass
murderer, she clearly got it all wrong. Being accused of being a
terrorist or 'simple' murderer would seem far less onerous.

Of course, the average visitor to Bali in future is unlikely to face
such problems. Chances are, if YOU visit you'll be OK. The odds of
you, or your partner, or your family being framed for drug importation
are quite small. Not really anything to worry about at all. Do you
anticipate going there anytime soon?

But all is not as clear-cut as it may seem. The sad thing is, the
anti-Bali backlash is liable to be huge, and deservedly so. This
incident has every prospect of doing to Indonesia what the film
"Midnight Express" did to the Turkish tourism industry. BUT those who
will suffer will be the Balinese locals who depend on tourists for the
vast majority of their income. After struggling to win back the
tourists after the bombing, the judiciary and military of their own
country have now delivered them a body blow which will make the
effects of the bombing seem insignificant. And they have no part in
the injustices wrought by their masters. The response will harm the
innocent and fail to markedly affect those responsible. And that's not
justice either.

If not, then deliberately close to the edge. To what end? This is the
*PIC* list!

I'm not saying I agree or disagree with your political and religious
rantings, only that I don't want to hear about them on the PIClist. I have
opinions on these topics too, but do not feel this is the forum for
inflicting them on other people. I don't give a crap what you think about
these issues, just as I presume others here don't care what I think.

On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 08:35:01AM -0400, Olin Lathrop wrote:
> Russell McMahon wrote:
> >Politics? - I don't think so.
>
> If not, then deliberately close to the edge. To what end? This is the
> *PIC* list!
>
> [SNIPPAGE]
>
> I for one have had enough of this. Put a sock in it already!

Olin,

You did so much better on your first post on the subject. In this case
you are right in some respects... and wrong in others. Presentation needs
work.

We have channels on the PICLIST. Folks can choose to subscribe or
unsubscribe to them. You are correct that interesting technical topics
sometimes drop in the [OT] category. However off topic means exactly that.
So Russell should be able to post his whimsy there.

I think you (Olin) are correct that maybe another channel would help.
However I think you may be moving in the wrong direction. Instead of
trying to more narrowly define and embedded or tech channel, why not
simply create a channel labeled [NT] for Non Tech. Then we expressly ask
that Russell post all non technical (i.e. political, religious, photography
for photography's sake) posts there.

The way I see it, even if you add more specific channels, then posters will
still post electronic and possibly PIC related stuff to [OT].

However by creating [NT] and having those who are completely disinterested
unsubscribe to it, then you can still catch the occasional mislabled post
to [OT] without having to encounter the non tech stuff.

I know this is a PIC/Electronics related list Olin. However censorship is
out of bounds for [OT] which by definition is non PIC/Electronics related.

> I'm not saying I agree or disagree with your political and religious
> rantings,

Not that there have been much of them recently apart from this one,
which was indeed a rant. Teaching our children science was
overwhelmingly about Popperian versus non-Popperian Science. While
such a distinction may indeed descend into the religious it is more
the religion of Swift's big and little endians or Punctuated
Equilibriasts versus Hopeful Monsterites than eg serious discussion
about origins.

> ... only that I don't want to hear about them on the PIClist.

Just as I don't want to hear about some of the other material on OT.
Entirely understandable. I don't find it at all hard to skim over such
and I assume you don't either. What I do find annoying is subject
lines that do not give a reasonable clue as to the subject or ones
where the subject changes substantially but the subject line doesn't.
I think you'll find that my subject lines usually give a fair idea of
what the post is about, allowing ease of discrimination.

At risk of getting my head shot off, i must say I don't have a problem with
contentious political stuff under OT. I seem to recall the Gulf War intruded
into OT 'cuz it was important to a lot of our American friends. The Corby case
has a lot of Aussies _really_ angry. Rightly so too, but that's only my
opinion. So yep, I agree censorship is something we can do without. Errm ...
but we may need a referee! Debbie :)

> The way I see it, even if you add more specific channels, then posters will
> still post electronic and possibly PIC related stuff to [OT].
>
> However by creating [NT] and having those who are completely disinterested
> unsubscribe to it, then you can still catch the occasional mislabled post
> to [OT] without having to encounter the non tech stuff.
>
> I know this is a PIC/Electronics related list Olin. However censorship is
> out of bounds for [OT] which by definition is non PIC/Electronics related.
>
> BAJ

> At risk of getting my head shot off, i must say I don't have a problem
> with contentious political stuff under OT.

It doesn't bug me either. But a couple have voiced dissent.

I think the dissent is valid. Especially Olin's point that he subscribes
to OT specifically to pick up OT electronics posts and Bob's point that
the digest contains everything.

Russell even acknowledged that the original post was far out of scope
by marking it [WOT].

> I seem to recall the Gulf War intruded
> into OT 'cuz it was important to a lot of our American friends.

> The Corby case
> has a lot of Aussies _really_ angry. Rightly so too, but that's only my
> opinion. So yep, I agree censorship is something we can do without.

Good.

> Errm ... but we may need a referee! Debbie :)

I don't think moderation works here. The two technological solutions raised
so far, another WOT or NT channel, and some programmatic way of specifying
digest content shoul be able to resolve the issues for all concerned
parties.

>> At risk of getting my head shot off, i must say I don't have a problem
>> with contentious political stuff under OT.
>
>It doesn't bug me either. But a couple have voiced dissent.
>
>I think the dissent is valid. Especially Olin's point that he subscribes
>to OT specifically to pick up OT electronics posts and Bob's point that
>the digest contains everything.

Quite frankly I cannot understand why any electronics would end up in OT,
unless it was historical stuff about Tesla coils or some such. Anything of
current electronics interest, but not specifically PIC I expect to see under
EE. I don't see a need to change it to TECH, or to add a TECH tag. The list
is primarily about PICs, and an adjunct of that is any other electronics,
with anything else being OT. Rather than try and make the PICList into an
"everything goes" list, do remember that we are hosted at no cost on an
academic system, and should try and slow down the traffic somewhat. I cannot
remember the most recently quoted traffic figures, but they were into the
gigabytes/day as I recall.

On Wednesday 01 June 2005 02:49 am, Alan B. Pearce scribbled:
> Quite frankly I cannot understand why any electronics would end up in OT,
> unless it was historical stuff about Tesla coils or some such. Anything of
> ...

Not specifically electronics, but how about stuff like locating enclosures or
information on contract manufacturers. Not PIC, not EE, but certainly
related to this group.

> On Wednesday 01 June 2005 02:49 am, Alan B. Pearce scribbled:
>> Quite frankly I cannot understand why any electronics would end up
>> in OT,
>> unless it was historical stuff about Tesla coils or some such.
>> Anything of
>> ...
>
> Not specifically electronics, but how about stuff like locating
> enclosures or
> information on contract manufacturers. Not PIC, not EE, but
> certainly
> related to this group.